


waiting to collect what you've let go

by Meridas



Series: won't be alone again [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Yasha Does It Her Damn Self, heads up this is not kind to your faves, prequel to fixing it, short & angry, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 19:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18598234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meridas/pseuds/Meridas
Summary: She has not been a happy person in a while now. Her soul is a raging storm and a lack of light and she is finding it harder and harder to be kind.





	waiting to collect what you've let go

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, in case you didn't read or didn't understand the tags, please be aware that this fic isn't a feel-good one. This isn't kind to your faves. This one is me venting some feelings and projecting on Yasha. This is the "fuck everyone and let Yasha be furious beyond fucking belief sometimes" fic that comes BEFORE the happy-ending events of 'put your hand in mine.' 
> 
> I actually wrote this a long time ago, and I really just wrote it for myself and my own feelings. I haven't wanted to post it without some kind of peace offering to offset it, so there's now part 3 of the series up at the same time, which is just Molly and Yasha being soft, in case you want that instead.
> 
> So if you're wanting to read about Yasha being kind and friendly and supportive of the Mighty Nein, please politely click the back button now, no hard feelings. 
> 
> title comes from Blackout by Linkin Park.

Yasha looks up from her drink, and there in the tavern is regret.

The Mighty Nein make a beeline for her, of course. They seem happy to see her, want to tell her about what they’re doing here. Jester mentions her mother. Fjord mentions finding answers. Beau wants to show her an owl.

They crowd closer to her as if she is part of them, as if she will come with them.

She steps back. “I think,” she says carefully, “ _the_ _fuck_ not.”

Their faces fall. She doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or scream.

“Why would you need me?” she asks coldly. She can’t tell if her voice is shaking, or if it’s her whole body. She feels like it might be all of her. “You’ve got a new friend, after all.”

The cleric in question is watching her calmly. Just looking at him she feels her anger building, bubbling up in her gut and clenching tight in her throat. She sees a snowy road and a fresh grave, and this fucking stranger stepping up and casting some bullshit magic and fucking with _Molly’s grave_ where he _wasn’t invited_.

Her hands are curling into fists, the memory flashing through her cold as ice and stoking her rage to burning hot. If she stays here with them for one more minute she might take him by the throat and do her level best to kill him.

She has not been a happy person in a while now. Her soul is a raging storm and a lack of light and she is finding it harder and harder to be kind.

The echo of thunder ringing in her ears has drowned out whatever their new friend said to her. She’s not interested, anyway. Then he starts to reach out a hand to her, and she snaps.

Yasha whirls toward him, her hair whipping out and blackening to the very tips. Every light in the tavern dims to shadows as Yasha lets rage engulf her, lets the dark fury in her soul pull the light in and crush it to oblivion.

“Don’t speak to me,” she spits, and her voice is chimes and screams and the silence of the end of the world. “Don’t you fucking _touch_ me. You had _no right_. You had no right to lay one finger of your fucking magic on him.”

Her eyes sweep over them, standing there petrified by her presence. Once, Yasha took care to shield them from her wings, from her darkness and her anger. Now she looks at them and her rage only builds until she feels like she will vomit or scream or run until she runs out of world.

She won’t hurt them, but neither will she shelter them. Not anymore.

“ _None_ of you had any right,” she says, and she isn’t shouting but her voice tears at her throat regardless. “You _left_. Like it was nothing to you, you said some pretty words and then you _left_. So don’t expect me to help _you_. I have better goddamn things to do, because you left it all to me.”

Her wings fade, back under her skin where the frozen heart of a hurricane lives. Light bleeds back into the tavern.

Yasha snatches up her shawl from the back of her chair and sweeps it over her shoulders. She came here at the Stormlord’s request. He never told her to stay.

“Yasha, come on.” Beau steps in front of her. “Wait and just hear us out, please?”

She looks down at Beauregard, so full of spit and vinegar and daring. She’d thought, maybe, that if things were different she could have acted on her feelings, that maybe down the line she would be free to pursue something with her.  She still has feelings for Beau. But now there is something thick and sour in the air between them, something poisonous she cannot cure. Not yet.

She holds out her hand. “Give me his cards,” she says, low and dangerous. Beau blinks at her for a moment like she doesn’t even understand.

She puts a hand in her pocket and comes out with the familiar deck. She’s scowling a little as she puts it in Yasha’s hand. “You’re not even gonna stay for a drink? Nothing? It’s been a month since we saw you, Yasha—”

“Why the fuck would I stay with you?” Yasha asks bluntly, and _oh_ she can see that it hurts, not just Beau but from the flinches she sees from Jester and Fjord, from the way Caleb’s eyes close. “I kept coming back for _Molly_. That’s why I stuck with you for as long as I did. Because that’s where Molly was. And you decided it was okay to leave him in the ground.”

She pockets the cards. “Fuck you,” she says, and now her voice is shaking with how much and how little she can convey with those words. There will never be words that will make them understand the gaping pit of loneliness hidden beneath her fury, and she doesn’t trust herself to say any more.

She picks up her bags and walks away.

Out in the night air, she gasps, sucking in air and trying to cool her rage. She has a focus. This damnable detour is done with. She went here, she said her piece, she even got something that mattered to Molly. She has his cards now. Maybe they can help.

She hears footsteps behind her, rapid and clumsy. She stops in the street, tilts her face up to the sky and breathes in. Breathes out. It’s not as cold here as it was on the road, but it’s crisp. The sky is clear overhead. She’ll head north again tonight.

“If you are trying what I think you are,” Caleb says behind her, his voice quiet and hoarse, “take this. Please. Tell— _nein_ , never mind. It doesn’t—you might need it.”

Cold fingers clasp around her hand, and when he pulls away there’s something warm and hard in her grip. She doesn’t look back at him.

She holds Molly’s heart-shaped pendant in her hand as she goes north.


End file.
